40 Celsius is 104 Fahrenheit. Maybe room temperature in Arizona.

It got that hot in The Bronx at the weekend. Especially inside the new Yankee Stadium (112 deg.F 44.5 deg.C). I was there. Oh and: "It doesn't matter what temperature a room is, it's always room temperature." -- Stephen Wright.

Confirmation Bias.

Isaac Asimov had a way, when talking about Robert Heinlein. "He always pictured himself a libertarian, which to my way of thinking means "I want the liberty to grow rich and you can have the liberty to starve". It's easy to believe that no one should depend on society for help when you yourself happen not to need such help."

Harry Browne, Presidential candidate of the United States Libertarian Party in 1996 and 2000, once said "we are not fiscally conservative and socially liberal. We are Libertarians, who believe in individual liberty and personal responsibility on all issues at all times". It's a shame so many of them fold on this philosophy when times get tough for them (see: businessman Lawrence Fink asking for regulation of the insurance industry during the recent banking collapse, whereas he previously stated repeatedly that government just gets in the way of long term profits).

It would sound like the perfect troll: find out how timid a kid was at age 3, that tells you how conservative he'll be at 23.

As it goes, it's completely backed up by research. And the researchers weren't looking for that info, it just sat there in the data.

In 1969, Berkeley professors Jack and Jeanne Block embarked on a study of childhood personality, asking nursery school teachers to rate children's temperaments.

They weren't even thinking about political orientation. And why would they? They're psychology professors researching personality theory, personality development, research methodology, and stuff like that.

Twenty years later, they decided to compare the subjects' childhood personalities with their political preferences as adults. Why? Who knows. Maybe for craps and giggles. Maybe because they had a column blank on their spreadsheet and wanted to fill it with one more metric to see if there was a link between voting and eating the erasers on the tops of pencils.

What was interesting to them was the arresting patterns they found.

As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient.

People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3.

Don't forget: the Blocks had NO IDEA what political affiliation any of the three year-olds would have when they did the survey in 1969. But go forward twenty years, and there it is. Everything that people say they want their kids to be: kids just like that became Libs. Everything that makes short-tempered parents scream and beat their kids: future applicants for a CPAC pass and an EIB golf shirt request on the Christmas list.

The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics. The article doesn't say if Professor N.S.Sherlock lit his pipe and smiled knowingly to himself upon hearing the results, but I wouldn't die of surprise if it happened.

Pure science: sometimes, the truth just hurts. Especially if you've been easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable all your life.

Western businessmen don't employ certain races to make themselves look multicultural. That's what stock photos in the Annual Report are for. And they don't use people from any particular continent to give the illusion of success, but that doesn't mean they don't do it. A Mercedes Benz with driver here, conspicuous use of the Amex Centurion Card there, and soon enough your Mister Big Shot to your prospective clients.

Everything counts in large amounts. It seems that some businessmen are easily impressed by a backpacker in a new suit and a fresh haircut.

Greenwashing: the practice of companies disingenuously spinning their products and policies as environmentally friendly. For example - if your company spends more in a year on redesigning and distributing its logo to look like a Spirograph green sun than it spent on solar power development in a six year period, that's greenwashing.

If you want to know just how the PTC takes 'freedom of speech' and twists it into something far from pure, here's a statistic for one year.

99.8%.

The one organization was responsible for 99.8% of all complaints received by the FCC. If you're ever interested in how that looks like as a pie chart, click on this link.

Gives a whole new meaning to the old phrase "we've received hundreds of complaints from one or two people..."

Interesting trolling. I see you know how to use the paragraph tag, for example.

In relation to having "healthy social and emotional skills", this study from a while back came to mind.

In 1969, Berkeley professors Jack and Jeanne Block embarked on a study of childhood personality, asking nursery school teachers to rate children's temperaments. They weren't even thinking about political orientation.

Twenty years later, they decided to compare the subjects' childhood personalities with their political preferences as adults. They found arresting patterns. As kids, liberals had developed close relationships with peers and were rated by their teachers as self-reliant, energetic, impulsive, and resilient. People who were conservative at age 23 had been described by their teachers as easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable at age 3. The reason for the difference, the Blocks hypothesized, was that insecure kids most needed the reassurance of tradition and authority, and they found it in conservative politics.

This may go some way to explaining why nobody from the conservative ranks in the US has stood up to their own bullies, going so far as to apologize to them when they say something out of line.

It also explains why the bullies themselves also seem easily victimized, easily offended, indecisive, fearful, rigid, inhibited, and vulnerable too.

I know that this will either be marked as Insightful or Troll-bait. I also know that will be because of someone's opinion. But facts are cold, hard things.

THANK YOU.

What's next? Missles carrying nuculur weapons?

'We believe that consumers should be able to freely access their favorite content and applications, regardless of what computer they have, what browser they like, or what device suits their needs.'

I've used a lot of different applications in my life, and one of my favorites of all time (of ALL TIME) is the combination of Photoshop and ImageReady.

I understand your avowed intent, as voiced in your wish, is that a person just like me should be able to freely access these applications, regardless of what monetary device suits my needs.

In my personal case, an IOU that is to be paid by my progeny in 100 years time suits my needs perfectly. The mere fact that I elected to have a vasectomy and HAVE no progeny that I know of is incidental: there is still the possibility that I have offspring without my current knowledge.

I will take the liberty of ordering the software from your website, and understand the monetary transaction (as stipulated in your very public corporate position) is merely a formality, and this money will be returned to me forthwith.

Yours, Jackpot777.

As a man in my early forties (married and faithful to one woman since 1999), I have to say this thread is an eye opener. I never even considered that there was a fad of almost-baldness a few years ago, but female bush is making a comeback.

I guess everything DID change after 9/11!

I wonder how many successful businessmen bed younger women, thinking something like "well, I don't look or act like I'm in my fifties", without knowing (without even knowing to know) that their junk adornment is as fashionable as a Leo Sayer perm.

Thank you fellow Slashdotters!

Within hours of its release, someone will find a way to render the identifying attributes moot. Resampling the film to a slightly slower of higher frame rate. Shaving a few pixels off the top/bottom, or the sides, of the movie and re-stretching the remaining image to fill the space. Tweaking the color saturation (and the addition of a second watermark at 1% opacity). Adding a modulating white-noise pitch above 30kHz (inaudible to us, but it changes the audio signature as surely as having a foghorn blare for two hours to a computer). Or a combination of some of the above, which doesn't detract from our perception of the film but which changes its fingerprint for analysis purposes.

Or at least: the statement about Dems not keeping out of your wallet is the actual flamebait. This graph shows how, over the last eighty years, the Democratic Party has generated more wealth for the country than the GOP. Even if you ignore Herbert Hoover, it's not even close. When broken down by State as shown by this graph, eighteen states pay more in Federal taxes than they receive in Federal spending. Only one is Republican (Texas), and it doesn't even hit the top 15. The reason the Tax Foundation (a libertarian-leaning think tank) gives is that the more urban Blue states supplement the more rural red states. This shows through to the local level too. "What is most clear is that on a per capita basis the transfer of tax dollars through the state’s fiscal system flows from rich to poorer places and from urban to rural places. This is consistent with the results by analysts from other states who examine the distribution of state government finances" were the findings from this in-depth study (page B:7, 9 of 12, PDF). The urban Democratic areas are the ones paying out of their wallets, whether it's at the local, state or national level. If your opinion is different, then you believe in something that isn't fact-based. It really is as simple as that. The numbers don't care what your political leanings are.